“Everything.”
“Jesus,” Otto said softly. “You just unzipped your fly. Care to tell me why?”
“Haaris has been Austin’s chief adviser.”
“I’ll check the embassy’s phone records, see if he’s called the Connaught in London. But it might not prove anything.”
“It’d prove that Haaris is still there,” McGarvey said. “But I have a hunch that whoever Doyle’s people are watching is a double, and that Haaris is already here or will be soon. Everyone is waiting for the Messiah to show up.”
“Including you.”
“Including me,” McGarvey said. “Where’s the news conference being held?”
“At the Aiwan with Rajput. And I’ve worked out your secondary cover, including a seven-month back story. You’re a geopolitical blogger on a site called PIP—‘Parks’s International Perspective.’ Right-wing, hawkish. Your basic tenant is that since the Second World War the U.S. has stepped into the role of the world’s benevolent police force. It’s something you believe anyway. I’ve posted almost one hundred articles.”
“No one at the news conference will have heard of the site.”
“They do now. Last night when I finished setting it up, I inserted nearly one million hits. An hour ago the number had gone up by two hundred thousand, and it’s still climbing because of your most recent posts on the Messiah wanting to go to war with India. The journalists in the room might never have heard of you until now, but none of them will admit it. Especially not to each other. Not for a while, anyway.”
“Anybody making any significant comments?”
“If you mean Dave Haaris, no. But I’m pretty sure that our people here on Campus are aware of the site. I have a filter on it to screen for anyone interesting. But the only posts against you are coming from unknowns or people who didn’t care to identify themselves. I’m working on tracing some of them back to their sources, but nothing much is coming up.”
“How do I get to it?”
“Google ‘PIP.’ You’d better read the last half dozen or so posts to get yourself up to speed. But like I said, I didn’t put any words in your mouth that you haven’t already spoken at one time or the other.”
McGarvey had to smile. “Have I always been that obvious?”
“Yes.”
“Keep an eye on Pete. I don’t trust her.”
Otto evaded the comment. “I can have a pistol sent in a diplomatic pouch from Jalalabad. Be there by dinnertime.”
“Don’t do it. I’d have to ditch it every time I came back to the hotel,” McGarvey said. “And if I get into a situation where I’d need a weapon, it’d probably be worthless to me.”
On the short drive over to the Presidential Palace McGarvey brought the PIP site up on his phone and scrolled backward through several days of articles before the Messiah had made his first appearance. Pakistan, according to what Otto had written, had never been a U.S. friend. Nor had the U.S. been theirs.
The United States had provided their military with billions in aid so that the U.S. would be allowed to make air strikes on al-Qaeda positions in the rugged mountains on the border with Afghanistan. All the while the ISI gave rock-solid assurances that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were perfectly safe under the protection of the Strategic Plans Division — a separate security service whose sole purpose was guarding the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
But he argued that the same high-ranking officers in the ISI who had promised nuclear security had also promised that they had no idea of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, even though the man’s compound was less than one mile from Pakistan’s main military academy.
The military had not officially reacted to the raid on bin Laden’s compound, prompting a lot of text messages to the effect that: if you honk your horn, do so lightly, because the Pakistani army is asleep. The ISI, however — even though it was military intelligence — had worked an under-the-table agreement with a German assassins-for-hire group to kill all the SEAL Team Six operators who’d participated in the raid. And it had very nearly succeeded.
Into this mix had come the Messiah.
THIRTY-FIVE
Pete took care to make as little noise as possible as she got dressed in a pair of jeans, loose untucked blue button-up shirt and boat shoes. She went to the window and looked down at the backyard that bordered on some woods.
The night sky was clear, the moon full, and so far as she could tell nothing moved below. She’d half expected Marty to send some minders from the Campus to watch over her, but last night Otto had assured her that no one had put her on any sort of a leash. He had promised Marty that she wouldn’t do anything dumb.
“Define ‘dumb,’” she’d asked, but Otto had just laughed.
The last word she’d been given was that Haaris was holed up at the Connaught in London and Mac had arrived in Pakistan and had checked in at the Marriott. Which put Haaris — if he was the Messiah — at Mac’s six o’clock. And that was totally unacceptable.
Walking was difficult for her. Her thighs were deeply bruised from the knees up, and just pulling on her jeans had been painful. In addition she had headaches that came and went; sometimes they were so intense that she had to close her eyes and sit down, lest she fall.
At the moment her head was clear, Mac’s image bright in her mind. Even with his disguise she’d recognized him immediately at the hospital. It was his eyes; everything that was inside him was there to read like an open book. A window into his soul, some poet had written. Her soul.
She turned to get her overnight bag and purse. Louise, in one of Otto’s floppy KGB T-shirts, her legs bare, one of her quirky smiles on her long, narrow face, stood at the open door.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I’ve been reading,” Louise said.
“Otto asked you to keep an eye on me?”
“He talked to Mac and so far everything is going okay, and last we’ve heard Haaris is still in London, but you know that.”
“So I’m busted, now what?” Pete asked. “You know I can’t just sit on my hands here.”
“Otto figured you’d want to go to London first, to make sure it’s really Haaris and not some imposter. Boyle has been ordered to personally stay out of it. If it is Haaris, Tommy might get himself killed. Or at the very least he would change the dynamic and force Haaris to do something unexpected.”
“What’s expected?”
“We think Haaris is either already in Pakistan or on his way. It’s something Mac needs to know.”
“I think so too,” Pete said.
Louise smiled again. “He’s really going to be pissed off when you show up in Islamabad.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“Driven men are not easy to love. I could write a book on the subject. But they’re worth every pound of trouble. In Mac’s case it has to be doubly hard because of what he’s already lost. And now he’s frightened out of his head about losing you.”
Pete was at a loss for words.
“He’s in love with you, that’s obvious to the most casual observer, so he wants to keep you in a cotton-batten lined box, tucked out of harm’s way.”
“He’s wrong about keeping me locked up.”
“Of course he is,” Louise said. “But good luck trying to argue with him. Just keep your ass down and your eyes peeled. Come downstairs, Otto sent something over for you and I’ll put on the coffee.”
It was three in the morning. “I want to get to Dulles as early as possible.”
“No rush, your flight doesn’t leave till nine-thirty. Otto’s booked you a business-class seat on Lufthansa. You’ll get to Heathrow around eleven this evening.”
Pete wasn’t really surprised, but something must have shown on her face, because Louise laughed.